There are numerous app stores on Android, but Google Play is by far the largest. App Annie counted only free apps for its downloads figure. Paid apps are included in the revenue analysis, however.

A combined 53 percent of iOS app downloads come from the U.S., China, Japan, and the U.K., with the balance coming from the rest of the world. Google Play’s top four download markets are the U.S., Japan, South Korea, and India. They combine for 43 percent of Google Play downloads.

China was the second-largest iOS market for downloads, even though Apple’s operating system only controls a fraction of Chinese market device share.

Interestingly, despite the fact that Google’s Android platform owns the massive Chinese smartphone market, Google offers very limited support for Google Play in China. Android apps are typically downloaded through third-party app stores.

While downlo! ads are important, developers ultimately want to get paid too.

App Annie defines app revenues as revenues flowing to developers “through the store, including revenues both from the price to download an app, as well as any in-app purchases (including subscriptions).”

We know that iOS app revenues historically dwarf Android revenues. App Annie found that iOS generates four times the revenues of Google Play, even as Google Play revenues have grown 311 percent this year.

Although iOS revenues are more concentrated in the U.S. than Google Play’s, it turns out iOS revenues are more evenly distributed across markets.

iOS receives 40 percent of its revenues from countries outside its largest four markets. Google Play saw only 23 percent of its revenues flow from outside the top four.

Google Play leans heavily on high monetization in Japan and South Korea, but has not effectively monetized its massive global user base.

The company started the quirky campaign in March of this year with a commercial that suggested IE was the browser you used only to download another, better browser. That spot, from CP+B, featured a guy ignoring his up-for-it girlfriend while he tried to uninstall Explorer from this PC. (The joke, for non-nerds, is that you cannot uninstall Explorer from a Windows machine.)

In the new commercial, a basement dwelling geek — signified by a lava lamp, an ET doll, double screen setup, etc. — attempts to troll Microsoft by repeatedly leaving the message “IE SUCKS” on comment boards and Twitter.

The company responds by extolling IE10’s virtues, including “IE adopts an island of kittens and donates them to children everywhere!!!” Check it out:

This great graph, taken using a wearable sensor, shows a student’s emotional, physical, and mental arousal during all different phases of every day of the week.

The device measures what’s called Electrodermal Activity — which measures the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, best known to control the fight-or-flight response. It is activated by emotional arousal, increased cognitive workload, or physical exertion.

Spikes pop up during lab work, exams, studying, and sleep, but what’s stunning is how low activity levels were during this student’s classes. They must have been super boring.

Companies have big plans to use social tools as innovation platforms, details a new study [download page] from the IBM Institute for Business Value. Among companies experienced in social innovation activities, 57% now use social business for internal collaboration, but that number will reach 78% over the next 2 years. Similarly, while 58% now monitor […]

Google Shopper has just gotten the bump to version 3.0 with an update that brings a roster of fresh features, including a new UI with speedier navigation and larger images. In addition to the fresh coat of paint, the app sports a brand-new sales screen, image-focused search results and product ratings provided by GoodGuide. Page and Co. have also thrown in push notifications to keep users abreast of new features and content, and an area to showcase retail promotions. Itching to start penny pinching? Hit the source link below for the download.

Netflix utterly dominates online-video traffic, according to a new study by Sandvine, accounting for 33 percent of peak traffic in North America. Amazon, its closest rival, has only 1.8 percent, and Hulu has 1.4 percent.

The real alternative to Netflix is BitTorrent, a popular file-sharing protocol through which users upload and download copies of movies and TV shows. Because it’s a technology for file sharing rather than a centralized service or piece of software, BitTorrent has proven very hard for movie studios to shut down.

But BitTorrent is down to 12 percent of all traffic in North America. It’s easy to see why: With Netflix’s wide selection, relatively low monthly price compared to cable-TV subscriptions, and speed of delivery, few people opt to wrestle with the complexity and delay of file downloads.

In Europe, BitTorrent is at 16 percent of traffic, and in Asia, where video services are less available, it’s 36 percent.

It’s not a given that BitTorrent use indicates illegal downloading of a video file—some game developers use it to distribute legal copies of their software, for example—but it is heavily used for video downloads.

Mobile video is quickly becoming a mass consumer phenomenon, much as digital photos were earlier in the smartphone adoption cycle.

In Mobile Video: The Small Screen Boom, we explore what is driving this massive mobile video growth, examine who watches mobile video and how they watch it, and look at the mobile video monetization opportunity.

We’ve posted the deck here. We hope you enjoy it.

BI Intelligenceis a new research and analysis service focused on mobile computing and the Internet. Subscribers can download the entire deck as a PDF or PowerPoint, as well as any of the individual charts from the presentation. Please sign up for a free trial here.

7 in 10 American mothers with children up to 12 years old make recommendations about brands, products and services to other mothers at least monthly, according to [download page] a study released October 2012 by The 360PR MomSquad and Mom It Forward. Fully half make brand recommendations daily. But what motivates them to recommend? Some […]

Here’s how it works: Developers place ads on Facebook’s website and its mobile apps. When users install their apps, developers pay a fee.

Because Facebook has a huge audience, and because its fast-growing base of mobile users have already shown they’re willing to download Facebook’s own app, it’s a natural audience for these ads. TinyCo, a mobile games maker, reported having 50 percent higher click-through rates. Companies like Zoosk, the online-dating service, and Fab, the e-commerce site, have also been running ads in tests.

Facebook has been swiftly laying the groundwork for this business, first launching its App Center, a centralized place for promoting apps, in May and rolling it out internationally.

Having proven it can drive traffic to apps through the App Center and through ads placed in Facebook users’ News Feeds, Facebook’s now seeking to make money off of that traffic.

Here’s a bonus: It keeps iPhone and Android developers, who might otherwise favor tools built into Apple and Google’s mobile platforms, loyal to Facebook, s! ince add ing Facebook’s social features to their apps is pretty much a requirement to get distribution—paid or unpaid—on Facebook.

US Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) outperform text search ads in click-through rates by 47%, in conversion rates by 38%, and in return on ad spend (ROAS) by 25%, according to [download page] an October 2012 report from Kenshoo covering Q3 activity. The average ROAS among the select merchants examined was $3.96 from PLAs versus […]

Digital Consigliere

Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.